For those who still use Mach3 and a parallel port interface, I have been doing a bit of work lately on the Mach Impact / Laser Engraving plugin which I have been using for laser produced images. Recently Andrea (http://www.robotfactory.it/ ) sent me a couple of his electro-magnets to evaluate Impact Engraving and this is the result. The first picture was produced with the magnet and the second with the laser. (same image, material, machine).

Tweakie. Attached files

 

Oh man, Tweakie, that is so neat. What software did you use to generate the gcode?

 

Hi Yoram,

There was no GCode.
The plugin takes an image, converts it to grayscale, allocates a dot pattern for each pixel value it encounters as it scans the image then line by line outputs a stream of pulses to drive the magnet on the Mach digital trigger at the same time as the X and Y Axis are driven. (must be a bit like rubbing your tummy whilst patting your head, as far as Mach is concerned )

Tweakie.

 

Tweaki, fantastic result, what material did you use?

I am moving in Oct and plan on building a 60 watt laser once I set settled in after the move using Bart's design.

Are you going to be selling the plug-in? I already have Mach3 and a G540 and your plug-in would save me from having to buy a DSP or a Retina controller.

 

The material is a non-PVC engraving laminate which I purchased in France, it has brushed aluminium look alike on the surface and black plastic within.

The plugin is free to download from the Artsoft website. Art has kindly made the code 'open source' which is how I have been allowed to make modifications to it's operation etc.

My latest version and PDF can be downloaded from here:-
Engraving.dll http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/Engraving.dll
Engraving.pdf http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/Engraving.pdf

Re. Lasers,
The plugin is still quite basic and I don't think it should be considered a replacement for DSP etc. but I have always used Mach3 and GCode for the vector stuff and the plugin for the raster stuff and my results are as good as anyone else.

Tweakie.

 

Thanks for the info Tweakie.

 

That's a great write-up, Tweakie. I'm kind of perplexed over one item , though. In the write-up you've said to set the velocity to between 4,000 and 20,000. On the PP, I think everybody else does too, I have my velocity set to about 300. I've tried 3000 and it stalls. 2000 is just makes it. Do you need bigger steppers to reach such high velocity?

 

Hi Yoram,

I really don't know the answer to that one, my steppers are not that big and my maximum, 100% reliable velocity, is 4,500 mm/min with ballscrews but the purpose built laser machines achieve upwards of 20,000 mm/min with their belt drives.

You are not getting your inch and millimetre units confused are you ??

Tweakie.

 

Now wait a minute, Tweakie, in your write-up you said 'units per minute' and now you said mm/min. Two different ball games. In Mach you set it in 'units per minute' which I was talking about. Since my machine is, generally, set to inches, are you implying that I'm running it at 2,000 inch/min? If that's the case than I shouldn't complain, shouldn't I? 2000x25.4=50800 mm/min.

 

Hi Yoram,

In the Introduction I clearly said:- "Please note that all units expressed here are metric unless otherwise stated".

But you are right, that does need clarification - thanks for drawing attention.

Tweakie.

 

Although there are still only a handful of us worldwide that are using the Mach3 Impact / Laser Engraving plugin I thought you may all be interested in the latest update.

Because the output from the plugin is bi-directional, the exact registration of the horizontal lines produced is dependant on device activation speed and from version 1.1 to date this line registration had been set to a compromise between the speed of a laser trigger and the speed of an impact magnet trigger.

Arising out of necessity, I have recently had to adjust this line timing to better reproduce some fine detail work with Lithophanes and in order to preserve the plugin’s compatibility between Laser and Magnet operation I thought it would be wise to include a user adjustable horizontal alignment feature.
To this end I have now added a group of 4 buttons to the GUI - these new buttons will allow the registration of the raster lines to be advanced by +1 or retarded by up to -2 image pixel widths (with the default being zero) and this should now be sufficient adjustment to cater for the correct operation of both devices.

I still have a bit of tidying-up to do (I always seem to get into a terrible mess between the manual coding and the automatic coding from the wizards when using Microsoft’s Visual C++), and I need to do some more testing but the latest version of the plugin (1.2c) will shortly be freely available to any that are interested.



(This image was laser produced onto Obeche).

Tweakie.